Hee - looked out the window and just happened to catch a hawk taking a bath in the water bowls we have outside for the wildlife. It splashed around, got really wet, then jumped out, shook off, and flew away, still damp. I've seen small birds take a 'bird bath' but never a foot-tall hawk; it's like watching a tiger bat around a ball of string or something - LOL.
Geez! I lost track of time and missed Tom's witty duck quote on ShoeCabbage - D'OH! So thanks to the ucomics people for having archives! (Nice one, Teresa!)
This morning, John and I heard a really weird noise - sounded like gravel or something sliding and then stopping. We both thought it might be something sliding down the roof, but when we went outside to look, nothing was at all amiss. (Hah - finally found a way to use the word 'amiss' - LOL) So John left for work, and a while later I was outside with the dogs, and they were both tentatively investigating the far corner of the lot. Since they don't usually go over there, I decided to see what they were curious about.
About halfway there I stopped and said, "Oh!" Yup - figured out what the noise was - a huge limb had cracked off this large live oak tree in the far corner of our side pasture. The gravelly sound must have been the leaves shaking, and it didn't make a huge crack or thud because the limb was already bent over close to the ground.
It landed on our wooden fence - mostly straddling it, although I could see some splintered boards in between the covering foliage. The trunk of the branch is probably about 4 feet around, or two feet in diameter. I wonder if the excessive heat over the last few days weakened (dried?) the wood so that it couldn't support its own weight anymore. (Or maybe the cows performed a secret bovine ritual so they could feast on the leaves - the dried grass/hay around here is getting pretty thin!)
I just told the landlord a little while ago that the trailer he'd been storing on the side road here collapsed. Now I have to tell him about this! On the plus side, however, oak makes really good firewood!
On something of a dare, chef-in-training, JoAnna, made a cake that looked like a philly cheese steak sandwich - *grin* Personally, I'd probably never get around to actually eating it because my brain would be thinking "cake!" while my eyes would be thinking "meaty cheesy sandwich" - this perpetual conflict would take up all my brain-CPU power, just like the tic-tac-toe game did in "War Games" - with no processing power left to coordinate arm and fork and mouth.
Ain't no high pressure system like a desert high pressure system! (Yeah - talking about the weather again.) California has wicked high pressure systems - especially when we're getting an 'offshore flow' - hot dry air blowing westerly. It makes you feel papery, in a dried, crackly parchment kind of way, oddly insubstantial, even if you drink a lot of water. It also seems to impact a serious degree of tension in the body. John and I have both noticed how well we sleep when there's a bit of cloud in the sky and we get an easterly wind from the ocean. And how poorly we sleep and how achy we feel with the severe high pressure. It's not just temperature, it's the whole environment. We're just not desert-dweller types - apparently, we're going to have to move to Oregon to get any kind of consistently good sleep.
We have an indoor/outdoor thermometer in the kitchen, where the outdoor sensor is actually in the sun, so we get some pretty ridiculous readings, which is all part of the fun. We even set the device to beep if we got really low or really high temps, and thought we'd set them so we'd never REALLY hear the alarm go off. Apparently, however, 140 degrees is NOT high enough - the last few days the outside temp, in the sun, with the hot dry wind, has been about 140-143 from 1 p.m. - 4 p.m. about. I don't need to tell anyone that this is just WRONG. Luckily, I've learned that if I close all the windows and seal the house before 10, it stays relatively cool most of the day. Yesterday, I caught an 82 inside and 142 outside reading - 60 degrees difference. (We used to get those in Upstate NY but the other way around - 60 inside and 0 outside - D'OH!)
I miss humidity. I miss NOT having dry nostrils when I wake up each morning. I would love to be able to get in the car without having to remember a water bottle all the time, but with 30 minutes each way to town and back, the sun and heat can really do you in. I miss the sound of cars swooshing by on a wet road and the grey imposing clouds of a long day's rain. Feel free to send rain my way if you have too much where you are!
